Missing Links: MAAH Symposium

About

This symposium explores concerns central within the history and theory of architecture today. Formed around three panels featuring invited speakers and contributions from the cohort, the event addresses the missing links in relationships between: histories, theories and the practice of architecture; architecture and related disciplinary fields; and the voices, bodies and stories omitted from the canon.

Through these themes, speakers will consider the spatial, social and environmental contexts within which the cohort have developed their research, including: working modes in the post-pandemic city and the reconfiguration of urban space; and pressing global, intersectional debates around decolonialisation, representations of marginalised people and the climate emergency. 

Each panel will feature a contribution from three invited keynote speakers, followed by related presentations of dissertation research projects by members of the cohort. An accompanying publication will share the cohort’s research methodologies of inhabitation, recognition, translation and orientation, which explore these themes. The symposium panels have been arranged to along with these ideas.

Speakers

Jane Hall, founding member of Assemble

Dr. Jane Hall is the inaugural recipient of the British Council Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship (2013) and founding member of the architecture collective, Assemble, who won the Turner Prize in 2015. Jane completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art, London (2018) where her research looked at the legacy of modernist architects working in both Brazil and the UK. Her particular focus is on interdisciplinary practice between artists and architects, and the emergence of alternative methods for architectural design.

Hall has held a number of positions, including as jury member for the Stirling Prize (2017) and external examiner at the University of Cambridge. Jane has lectured internationally and is a visiting lecturer and regular critic at the Royal College of Art, Bartlett School of Architecture and University of Cambridge, where she is currently a Teaching Associate in gender architecture. 

Hall’s research has been published widely. She is the author of the book Breaking Ground, Architecture by Women (Phaidon, 2019) and Woman Made (Phaidon, 2021) about the work of women designers globally.

Professor Amy Kulper, Director of School, The Bartlett School of Architecture

Professor Amy Kulper joined UCL as the new Director of the Bartlett School of Architecture, in September 2022, having previously held the position of Head of Architecture at Rhode Island School of Design. Her teaching and research focus on the intersections of history, theory, criticism and design. Kulper has also taught at the University of Cambridge, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Southern California Institute for Architecture (SCI_Arc), and the University of Michigan, where she was four-time recipient of the Donna M. Salzer Award for teaching excellence.

Kulper co-chaired the 2019 ACSA national conference Black Box: Articulating Architecture’s Core in the Post-Digital Era, co-curating the accompanying exhibition, Drawing for the Design Imaginary at the Carnegie-Mellon Museum. More recently she co-curated Drawing Attention: The Digital Culture of Contemporary Architectural Drawings, a group exhibition at Roca Gallery in London.

Kulper’s scholarly work has been published in edited volumes and journals including the Journal of Architecture, The Architectural Review, Log, Architecture and Culture, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, and Candide. From 2011 to 2017, she served as the Design Editor for the Journal of Architectural Education, receiving the ACSA Distinguished Service Award for her work in transforming the design content of the journal.

Muyiwa Oki, President-Elect RIBA

Muyiwa Oki, Millennial RIBA president-elect (president 2023-2025), was elected on a campaign to speak up for the future. With the responsibility and privilege of raising the profile of the architect globally, his ambitions are to advocate for his campaign priorities of equity, transparency, and innovation in architecture.

As an architect at Mace Group, he focuses on technology and innovation, working on Modern Means of Construction projects. During his time at Grimshaw Architects, he was the founder and chair of MEGA (Multi-Ethnic Group and Allies) network that drove cultural change for colleagues globally.

Muyiwa is an ambassador, speaker and mentor for aspiring architects in programmes such as Mayor of London Design Challenge, Scale Rule, and the Grimshaw Foundation, which exists to encourage greater social mobility within the industry.

Albena Yaneva, Director of Manchester University’s Architecture Research Group

Professor Albena Yaneva is Director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG) at the The University of Manchester Urban Institute. She has been Visiting Professor at Princeton School of Architecture and Parsons School of Design. In 2017 she was awarded the Lise Meitner Visiting Chair in Architecture at Lund University, Sweden.

After a PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des mines de Paris (2001) with Professor Bruno Latour, Yaneva has worked at Harvard University, the Max-Planck Institite for the History of Science in Berlin and the Austrian Academy of Science in Vienna. Her research is intrinsically transdisciplinary and spans the boundaries of science studies, cognitive anthropology, architectural theory and political philosophy. 

Yaneva is the author of seven monographs, including Latour for Architects (Routledge, 2022) and Crafting History: Archiving and the Quest for Architectural Legacy (Cornell University Press, 2020). She is the recipient of academic grants from the Swedish Research Council (2019-2021) and the ESRC (2021-2022). Yaneva was a judge for the 2017 RIBA President's Medals in the Silver Medal category.

Schedule

09.30 Introduction

Charlotte Morgan and Jan Zachmann, and Professor Peg Rawes. 

Panel 1 – Recognition: Underrepresented Voices in Architecture

9.35 Muyiwa Oki, in dialogue with Flo Armitage-Hookes
10.00 El Fancourt - LGBTQ+ Identities in Architectures: How London’s queerness has been created through its built environment
10:10 Mira Idries - The Landscape Beyond the Highway: Reclaiming the Depopulated Villages West of Jerusalem
10.20 Geethanjali Raman - The Sabarimala Discourse: navigating the landscapes of faith and equality within the Indian context.
10.30 Discussion hosted by Flo Armitage-Hookes

10.45 Break 

Panel 2 - Translation: Relationships between History, Theory and Practice

11.00 Dr Jane Hall - Informal methodologies as a politically subversive approach to design: collaboration, material experimentation and visible construction.
11.30 Hester van den Bold - Reappraising Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities in Translation
11.40 Eglé Packauskaite - Out of the Shadows: Study of Jaqueline Tyrwhitt’s Thought and Practice in Post-War Britain
11.50 Danae Santibáñez - The ‘As Found’ and The ‘Ugly’: Non-linear time in the post-war curatorial practices of architects Alison Smithson and Lina Bo Bardi
12.00 Discussion hosted by Charlotte Morgan and Jan Zachmann

12.15 Lunch Break 

Panel 3 – Inhabitation: Modes of Contemporary Urbanism

13:00 Professor Albena Yaneva - Architecture after Covid
13.30 Nicolás Penna Bustos - Vacant Spaces in Gran Torre Santiago: a study on the post-pandemic obsolescence of the office building typology
13.40 Eva Tisnikar - Architectures of the Voice: an experiment in a biopolitical genealogy of public address systems
13.50 Patricia Cerón - Online Neighbourhood
14:00 Response from Professor Amy Kulper (time TBC shortly)
14.15 Discussion hosted by Yanyu Sun

14.30 Break

Orientations: Student-led tour

14.45 Marianna Janowicz -  Leaky exposure. A walking tour of Somers Town’s laundry drying yards. 
Or
14:45 Eva Tisnikar – A King’s Cross Architectural Treasure Hunt

15:45 Delegates gather at The Somers Town Coffee House, 60 Chalton St, London NW1
17:00 Event ends.

This event is open to all. No booking required.